


we’re only at home when we’re on the wing

by klainelynch



Series: a far cry from the world we thought we’d inherit [2]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Aang is a good dad, Aang teaching Kya about waterbending but also about Air Nomads, Air Temple Island, Family, Family Fluff, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, How is that not a tag, Katara is a good mom, Minor or Background Relationship(s) - Freeform, Mother-Daughter Relationship, POV Aang (Avatar), POV Katara (Avatar), POV Kya II (Avatar), Sickfic, Writer's Month 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25756591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klainelynch/pseuds/klainelynch
Summary: Ch. 1- Aang sees that Kya needs some father & daughter time, and takes her on a trip like the Air Nomads used to.Ch. 2- Katara takes care of a sick Kya
Relationships: Aang & Kya II (Avatar), Katara & Kya II (Avatar)
Series: a far cry from the world we thought we’d inherit [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859692
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33
Collections: Writer's Month 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer’s month [prompt](https://writersmonth.tumblr.com/prompts) #6 Ocean.

"Really, Dad? Just you and me?" Kya's eyes were wide with excitement, and Aang smiled.

"Just you and me," he repeated. "It's been awhile since Appa's gotten to travel, and I think he misses it." Appa probably didn’t miss the intense traveling they had put him through in the War, but Air Temple Island never seemed like enough space for his buddy.

She squealed and hugged his waist. "I'll get my waterskin pouch!" As she ran off to her room, Aang felt Katara kiss his temple.

"Told you she would be excited," she said with only a hint of gloating in her voice. Aang laughed and kissed his wife properly.

"I'm glad she's so close with you," he said, and he didn't need to say that he wished he was close with Kya too. It had always been so easy between him and Bumi, but Kya was of a different sort altogether. Quiet one moment, rambunctious the next— he never knew what to make of her. At times, his old fears of not knowing how to be a good father would rear their ugly head. But then she would smile, and Aang would feel his heart melting all over again, and he would realize how silly he had been.

"I think she's worried about this new baby," Katara said. "She hasn't said as much, but she keeps asking questions that make me think she's worried about not being the youngest any more. Why don’t you take her out for some bending practice? She’s been doing great, but I think learning from you will mean a lot to her."

Aang smiled. “I’m honored my old Sifu would allow someone else to train her favorite pupil.”

Katara playfully smacked him on the shoulder. “Watch who you’re calling old! And it’s just one lesson— _I’m_ still her teacher.”

.

Appa wasn't as fast as he once was, but the moment he was in the air, he growled, and it was just like old times. Aang had Kya in his lap as he steered, so they didn't need to put the saddle on Appa. The fresh smell of seawater was all around, and Aang breathed in deeply.

“So where are we going?” Kya asked.

Aang shrugged. “I don’t really have a place in mind. I figured we would just fly, and when we see a spot that looks good, we’ll stop there.”

Kya’s head was turned enough for Aang to see how wide her eyes were. “Really? You can do that?”

“Of course!” Aang said as he took Appa even higher into the air. “When I first got Appa, the nuns told me to take him on an adventure, and report back when I had three stories worth telling. I asked where I should go, and they told me I was allowed to go anywhere that I hadn’t been before.”

“Woah.”

They must have flown for an hour before Aang found an island worth landing on. If he had to guess, they were somewhere in the Fire Nation. The beach was glaringly white as they landed, and Appa found a grove of trees to rest under. Aang took off his shoes and stepped into the ocean just enough for his ankles to get wet, and Kya did exactly as her father had done.

"Alright, show me what Mom has been teaching you," Aang said.

Kya brought her hands up near her midsection and spread her fingers. "Right now, she's trying to help me stream the water. I can get it sometimes, but it usually falls apart when I can't see what I'm bending." She bent some water from the ocean and pulled it in front of her. Sure enough, as soon as she sent it behind her, the water splashed back down. Kya huffed and moved like she wanted to try again, but Aang held up a hand.

"I think I see what's going on," he said. "You're relying on your eyes when you need to rely on your sense of where the water is."

"I mean, I can feel the water, but I don't know how to make it go where I want if I can't see it!" She threw up her arms and marched up the beach, far away from the water.

Aang rubbed his chin and thought for a minute before he sat beside her. "Think about your Aunt Toph. She can't see the earth that she's bending, but she knows it's there. She can feel it with her touch. It's the same thing for you— trust in your other senses, and then the rest will click into place."

He gestured over to a small stream that fed into the ocean. "You don't mind getting a little more wet, do you?" She shook her head and smiled playfully. As they sat in the water, they could feel the current move slowly past them; Aang crossed his legs into a meditative pose, and Kya copied him as best as she could.

"Alright, we're going to close our eyes, and we're not going to try to bend the water," Aang said. "We're just going to focus on being aware of it all around us. Are you ready?"

Kya hesitated, but she did as he asked, and Aang closed his eyes too.

"Breathe in, breathe out," he said, and he allowed the words to steady his heartbeat. He waited until his breath matched Kya's before starting.

"Allow your sense of touch to be all that you focus on. What does the water feel like?"

"It's kind of cool," she said. "It's up to my belly button, kind of like when I'm in the bath, but it's moving too fast to feel like that."

"Good," Aang said. "Think about what the water is doing to you. How is it affecting your clothes?"

"My skirt is totally soaked. It's kind of sticking to me, but then the water moves it and it's not doing that anymore. Um, it's kind of making my toes cold."

Aang opened his eyes just enough to see Kya wiggling her toes, and he tried not to laugh. "How about sound? What can you hear the water doing?"

A long pause before she answered, "I can't really hear this water, but the ocean is really loud. Every time the water comes on shore, I can hear it go out and back in."

"That's good, Kya. It's important to be aware of all the water around you, not just what's right in front of you. Now let’s think about smell. Breathe in deep through your nose and exhale through your mouth." He waited until he could hear that she had done so before asking what she could smell.

"This water is clean," she said immediately. "Sometimes the water in the city is dirty, and it doesn't smell good, but this water isn't like that at all. It still smells like the ocean, so I don't think you could drink it."

"Excellent work. I think you’re ready to try again. Keep your eyes closed— I want you to try that same move from before, where you stream the water behind you. I'm going to open my eyes and let you know how you do."

"Okay," she said, and Aang thought he heard just a touch more confidence in her voice. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth as she raised both hands out of the water. The stream was small, but when she sent it behind her, it stayed perfectly level as it traveled back around to her hands. Kya opened her eyes immediately.

"I did it!" she exclaimed. "I could feel it!"

"Yes, you did," Aang said, and he pulled her in for a big hug.

.

They kept practicing streaming until Kya could send the water ten feet away and pull it back just as easily. Later, after they bent the water out of their clothes and ate the lunches they had packed, Aang flew them home by way of the Earth Kingdom. It was a bit of a detour, but he didn’t want to end this day any earlier than he had to.

"I'm really glad you wanted to travel with me today," Aang said. He loved Republic City, loved what he had helped to create, but sometimes he felt suffocated by it. "You have the Air Nomad's spirit of freedom."

"Really?" Kya asked, and Aang could see the pride in her eyes. He squeezed her tight and kissed her temple.

"Really," he repeated. "I love you so much, Kya."

"I love you too, Dad."  
.

.

.

Kya shook out her skirt and was amazed that she could still find more sand in it. The Si Wong Desert had seemed like the ultimate test of will for a waterbender, and it had more than lived up to her expectations. Not that she could have told that to Sarnai. Her brown eyes were piercing Kya, just waiting for her to complain.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Kya said. It was the exact thing to rile up her girlfriend, and she rose to the bait.

“That was nothing,” she insisted. “We didn’t even see a sand shark.”

“Well, we didn’t all grow up on a sand-sailer, now did we?” She flipped her head over and shook more sand out of her hair, hiding her reddening face. She didn’t talk about her own childhood, and it had been a source of contention for the pair.

“So where are we off to next?” Sarnai asked, pointedly changing the subject.

 _Anywhere with water_ , Kya thought. She _could_ go weeks without bending, but she really did need to reconnect herself with her element. “We haven’t had a set destination yet, so why start now? We’ll just walk, and stop when we see a spot that looks good.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to take them back. Not for what she had said— traveling like this with Sarnai had made her happier than she could have imagined— but for how she had said them. Those were her dad’s words, from that trip when she was a kid. From before Tenzin, and before Dad was no longer the last airbender.

She hadn’t thought about that day in a long time. It was so long ago that it felt more like a dream, or like a story she had been told, rather than something from her own life.

“Babe?” Sarnai asked, and Kya realized that she had just been staring into space without even realizing. She shook her thoughts away and interlaced their fingers.

“I changed my mind— let’s walk east and don’t stop till we hit the ocean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is a lyric from Rush’s “Dreamline,” and this is the SECOND Avatar fic to get a title from that song, because I’m absolutely ridiculous but that song really is that good
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [klainelynch](https://klainelynch.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writer’s month [prompt](https://writersmonth.tumblr.com/prompts) #9 Illness.

Katara didn't get sick very often, and neither did her brother, rainy adventures in storms notwithstanding. She wasn't sure if they had inherited good health from their parents, or were lucky, or if growing up in the cold prevented illness. She hadn't realized how unusual this was until her own kids. Bumi and Tenzin got a sore throat every time the seasons changed; her youngest seemed to copy everything that his older brother did. 

But Kya was the one she really had to watch over. She had so many ear infections that she would lose her hearing at times. If a new disease passed through the area, it was guaranteed that Kya would be one of the ones to catch it. Every winter, she came down with a stomach bug, and every spring, there were at least a few weeks of constant sneezing and coughing that sometimes turned more serious; last week, it had turned more serious.

"Mooooooom! I need some juice!"

Their home on Air Temple Island was large, but Kya's voice carried clearly throughout. Katara finished putting on Tenzin's shoes before sending him to play with Bumi. Being outnumbered by your kids was tricky at times, but at least they could take care of each other when she had to focus on just one of them. 

Katara grabbed Kya’s favorite kind of juice and brought it to her room. She was curled up in the middle of her bed, where she had all but lived for the past week. For a girl who never stopped moving, it had to be the worst kind of torture.

"How are you feeling this morning? Do you want me to bring you some breakfast too?" She felt her forehead, which was cooler than the day before, but warm enough to let her know that she was still sick.

Kya shook her head and coughed. "Just juice. Maybe a cup of jook later."

“Of course,” Katara smiled. She and Aang had really worried over Kya’s lack of an appetite these last few days, so this was a good sign. “I’ll bring you your jook in a little bit.” She started to stand up, but Kya grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. 

“Mom, please don’t go, I’m so bored,” she whined. 

“Do you want me to bring you another book? What happened to the ones Dad brought you last night?” She glanced around the room and noticed that they were all thrown around her room, along with every one of her stuffed animals.

“No! I don’t want to read, or color, or do anything in my bed any more. I just want to be better again.” She pulled the covers over her head and started to cry. It wasn’t the “cry until I get my way” cry; it was the cry of someone who was deeply tired and frustrated and too young to explain any of that in words, so she just had to cry.

Katara laid down next to her daughter and held on tight. Kya turned her face in towards her, and soon Katara’s shirt was soaked with tears and snot. Eventually, she settled down enough to ask, “Why can’t you just heal me? I want to go out and play.”

She pushed back Kya's hair and smiled. "My healing doesn't work like that, sweetie. It’s more for cuts and broken bones. When you’re sick, you just have to rest up on your own and let your body do the healing for you."

"Well that's not very useful," Kya huffed.

Katara had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Her dad always said that kids were a mirror of their parents, and that never rang more true than when Kya spoke her mind as boldly as Katara.

"You know, I think when you get better, it's time for me to start teaching you how to heal."

"Really?"

"Yes. You're a few years younger than I was when I started, but I think you could handle it. Your brothers should give you plenty of practice, with all the scrapes and bruises they get in a day." 

Just yesterday, Bumi had taken Tenzin out "exploring," and by the time they got back, they had cuts all over their arms and legs, apparently from taking a wrong turn through some bushes with hidden thorns. Katara wanted to get mad, but their matching grins let her know they weren't hurt, just being boneheads.

"Healing is tricky— you have to be careful because you're working with the energy inside of another person and you don't want to hurt them by accident," she said. "But you take good care of others, and I think you would make a wonderful healer."

Kya smiled, and it was the happiest Katara had seen her in a week. “Thanks, Mom. Can you bring me some jook now? I want to get better so you can teach me everything.”

“Of course,” she said, kissing her on the forehead, “And as you eat, I’ll tell you the story of how I learned how to heal from the masters at the North Pole.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t think I would respond to this prompt until an idea hit me yesterday, so this was even more last minute than usual. But seriously, how did people even deal with being sick when they couldn’t just lay on the couch and watch The Price is Right followed by hours of Law & Order SVU? And kids get sick a LOT so that would have to be torture, right???
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [klainelynch](https://klainelynch.tumblr.com/)


End file.
